We lost one of the good ones this week. My good friend and guitar picker Richard Loughridge passed away over the weekend. He's had cancer almost as long as I'd known him - around 11 years now - and it finally caught up with him. But he gave it a hell of a fight.

When he joined up with the group we had at the time - The Crossroad Singers - it was just doing church gigs. But Richard soon came up with the idea that we three musicians should be doing something more secular on our own. And so the trio of "Matthew-Mark, Luke and Bubba" came to be { Matthew-Mark being a single name down here in the south} . The three of us came from the same place. We all agreed that Tom Paxton was one of the greatest songwriters on the planet. Richard convinced me that Townes Van Zandt was not far behind him and I was able to introduce Richard and David to Tim O'Brien and Geoff Muldaur's music.

We fell into a regular pattern of singing together on Monday nights. Richard always had a lot of stories to tell. And most of them were true. He once saw Elvis as an opening act for Ernest Tubb. He managed to get backstage once for Hank Williams Sr's autograph. Only to find Hank sitting there in his boxer shorts. And he even paid a head waiter at a hotel a hefty tip to get a good table for a Kingston Trio performance. Only to find out they were the ONLY table in the house. It was the last night of a multi-week run.

Richard was a truly honest man. Not only in his dealings with others but how he dealt with a song too. He always knew what was right for his voice and what wasn't. If the song didn't speak to him in a personal way he just wouldn't do it.

I think we sent Richard off in a grand fashion yesterday. Plenty of stories, songs, laughter and tears. There were a couple of times I didn't think I was going to make it through the songs we sang.

"I wonder who, will sing for me
When I'm called to cross that silent sea,
Who will sing for me"

And when they played a recording of Richard singing Townes Van Zandt's "To Live is To Fly" it just made us want to roll back the clock and have one more Monday night of music and laughter.

I don't make friends with men very easily. I'm not sure why. The "best man" at my wedding was a woman. But I loved Richard. And the trio we had with David Grant on banjo and guitar, Richard on guitar and myself on mandolin will always be one of the highlights of my life. And at the end - I'll look back on those Monday nights, remember, and smile.

Richard was one of the good ones. And I look forward to picking with him again.